Conard County Witness Read online

  “But I want to understand.”

  “Innocence is a beautiful thing. Treasure it. It certainly won’t do anyone any good if you wade into that hell even a few small steps. Anyway, you went through your own kind of hell. It seems life doesn’t leave anyone utterly untouched.”

  He watched her expression turn thoughtful, and wished he could bring back her earlier animation. At least she wasn’t looking tense at the moment. Small triumph. He enjoyed seeing her curled on the couch in her jeans and yellow sweater, her blond hair all mussed by the parka’s hood. Curls had begun to show, and he wondered if they were natural. He liked them, and wondered why her hair had appeared so straight earlier.

  Maybe she’d made a practice of trying to look businesslike, and for a woman that would mean minimizing her attractions. She certainly had plenty of them. He felt his body stirring in response and turned to the fire, a much safer object for his attention.

  He realized with relief that he was getting past expecting to hear Sara’s voice answer her, or see Sara come around the corner at any moment. That was one side effect of seeing Lacy that he hadn’t anticipated: the link between the two of them in his mind. He was glad to feel it breaking, because much as he missed Sara, he wanted to get to know Lacy Devane, apart from his late wife. A person unto herself.

  In the corner, the TV still played, muted. But the weather was running along the bottom of the screen and he sat forward a little as he realized the predictions were worsening.

  “What?” he heard Lacy ask.

  “The weather’s getting worse.”

  “How can it possibly get worse? Isn’t thirty below bad enough?”

  He looked at her. “That’s not all of it. About three inches of snow, and more wind. Lots of wind. We’re going to whiteout, and that little bit of snow is going to seem like a huge blizzard. It won’t settle until the wind dies down.”

  “Then I’m glad we went shopping.”

  He turned a little toward her. “You understand how deadly this weather is, Lacy? I can’t emphasize enough. You could get lost in the whiteout only a few feet from the house. You could freeze to death in very short order. So no going out, not even to see what it’s like, okay?”

  She nodded then flashed a grin. “I guess my boogeyman won’t be able to get me today.”

  That surprised a laugh from him, and any remaining tension blew away as if a fresh wind had entered the house. “He’d freeze to death climbing the porch steps...if he could find them.”

  “I like the sound of that. Kudos to the clipper.”

  He chuckled again. “So what would you like to do since we’re cut off from the world? Play a game? Watch a movie?”

  “What about working on that kitchen of yours? Is it possible?”

  “Not today, unfortunately. Tools are out in the shed.”

  He enjoyed her widening eyes. “Won’t they freeze? The lubricants, I mean?”

  “I have a heater out there. Never goes below forty degrees.” Tools hardly held his attention with Lacy sitting across from him. Parts of his mind, body and heart seemed to be waking from a long sleep. Not good. She’d come here for protection, not harassment. Besides, Sara stood between them, a ghost as real as their memories of her. He wouldn’t want to dishonor her memory by dishonoring her friend.

  Then another thought struck him: that shed was heated. A great place for someone to hide out during this weather. He shifted uneasily, wondering if he’d been too quick to dismiss Lacy’s fears as being the result of having been threatened for so long.

  What if she was right? He’d admitted the possibility but...for someone to follow her here? It seemed so unlikely. If anyone really did want to get to her, wouldn’t they simply look for her getting off the bus in Portland?

  But when she didn’t get off...

  He sprang from his chair as quickly as he could, given his leg. He needed to check that shed, make sure it was still locked. He could use the cold as an excuse, say he was going to check the heater.

  Damn, he felt like an idiot, holding out a helping hand, assuring her that her fears were reasonable, then acting as if they weren’t. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “Jess?”

  He looked at her, hoping his face didn’t reveal his sudden uneasiness. “You just made me think. I checked the heater this fall when it started getting cold but given these temps, maybe I’d better check it again before the whiteout hits. It’ll only take a minute.” He pulled back the curtain. Still fairly calm.

  “Didn’t you just warn me about the cold?”

  “Yeah, but I have the gear for it. Never know when I might be called in to work for an emergency. So I’ll dress. Like I said, it’ll only take a few minutes.”

  She half smiled. “Then bring back some tools. I could do with hammering some nails or something.”

  “If you’re that eager, I guess we could work on the backsplash. But let me check that heater.”

  He pulled on his windproof snow pants, his thermal-lined boots and his parka, zipping up the snorkel against the hood. Thick gloves with liners protected his hands, at least until he tried to unlock the shed. A few seconds of exposure through the liners would be necessary to open the shed, but with his inner gloves on he should be okay for the time it took. He made sure the key was in an accessible pocket, then headed out the back door. He could feel Lacy’s eyes on him through the window beside the door as he limped his way to the shed.

  Because he was limping again. No amount of trying to walk normally seemed to be working right now. Maybe he should be using his cane. Too late.

  Inside his winter gear, his body warmth acted like a heater. Except for his artificial leg. No heat there, and he once again seemed to feel the cold creeping upward to his thigh. Imagination, he told himself. His brain expected the cold and created it.

  Sometimes he felt that losing his leg was a kind of universal justice. He’d volunteered, he’d gone into a war zone, and when he remembered it, he sometimes didn’t think being there as a medic in any way excused his participation. Not always. But he lived with nightmares he didn’t share with anyone, and rightly or wrongly, a collective guilt sometimes weighed on him.

  Wrongly, he decided. He knew what he’d done, how many lives he had saved, how many civilians he had helped with everything from vaccinations to wound treatment and antibiotics. He’d been trying to do good. Too bad it had been in the middle of hell.

  He reached the shed without falling, yanked off his glove and reached for the key. The heavy-duty padlock was untouched, but he opened it anyway. Might as well check the heat and pick up a few tools. Leaving the key in the lock, he pulled the bar back and opened the door. Warm. The heater was working, operating on a buried propane tank just like the heater and the stove in his house.

  Out here, though, he used radiant heat from water that circulated in pipes from a heated reservoir. Safer than having an open flame, more reliable than electricity. When the water heated up enough, it moved through the pipes. He picked up some grouting tools, smiled faintly at the hammer because Lacy had mentioned wanting to pound something, and wondered what he could give her to pound on. Nothing at the moment. The tiles, grout and glue were all in the house already.

  Satisfied that everything was okay, he stepped out into the cold, noticing that the wind was starting to pick up again. A threat all by itself, it didn’t need any snow to make it dangerous. That would probably come later.

  He locked up, tested the latch, then hobbled back to the house, feeling utterly graceless. One of these days he was going to have to look into a better leg, one that would allow him to really run again. Dang things cost too much, but it might be worth it. He missed a full-out lope.

  He had to steady himself on the back porch rail to climb the steps, then he was back inside. Lacy waited anxiously.

  “I’m fine,”
he said as he dumped the tools on the unfinished counter. Yeah, he was fine, although his leg didn’t feel like it. He wondered if the cold had stiffened the knee joint a bit.

  He shed his parka as he hobbled to the front room, then dropped into the rocker. Lacy grabbed his parka and gloves and carried them to the hall.

  When she returned, he was still waiting for the heat from the woodstove to thaw him out. Thaw his pretend leg out. Boy, that sounded weird.

  She approached almost tentatively and touched his shoulder lightly. She might as well have touched him with a brand. He felt it in every cell of his being, the wonderful, nearly forgotten, flare of desire. A different kind of heat.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Fine,” he repeated. “I think my leg stiffened a bit. The artificial one. It’ll be okay as soon as it warms up.”

  She hesitated beside him, and he could feel her need to do something for him. “Maybe I should get your crutch?”

  He shook his head. “It’ll thaw. Dang, it’s nasty out there, and the snow hasn’t even started. But the heater’s working just fine.”

  “Well that’s good.”

  He tilted his head back and looked up at her. “You don’t need to hover, Lacy. I know you’re concerned, but it’ll be all better in just a minute.”

  “Sure.”

  She almost seemed to shrink back to the couch and he felt just awful when he realized how she must have heard that bit about hovering. People didn’t usually say that in a complimentary way. It was too late to rephrase it now, though.

  He sat there, feeling about an inch tall, and wondering how he could fix things. Finally he decided to just address it straight up.

  “Lacy, I didn’t mean anything critical with that comment. Poor choice of words. I just didn’t want you to worry needlessly about me.”

  She offered a wan smile. “Sure.”

  This was going well, he thought. Facing once again how much they were still strangers when one thoughtless thing could have that much impact. Finally it just burst out of him. “Do I need to walk on eggshells?”

  Oh, that got a blazing spark from her blue eyes. “No,” she answered tautly.

  “Good, because if I have to watch every word I say, neither of us is going to be comfortable. I wasn’t being critical of you. I repeat. No criticism intended. Yes, I’m frustrated at the way my leg stiffened up, yes, it was a poor choice of words, but no criticism.”

  “Okay.” But then her face softened a bit.

  Relief washed through him. Good. They’d get through this. Time to move on. “I brought in the tools I needed for grouting the tile, but first we’ll have to glue them into place on the wall. How dirty do you want to get?”

  He was pleased to see a more natural smile come to her face. “I get to play with mud?”

  “I couldn’t have expressed it better. Did you bring any grungies with you?”

  “You mean clothes I don’t mind ruining? Sure.”

  “Then go put them on while I continue to thaw this leg. Then we’ll have some fun.”

  As soon as she went upstairs, he pulled off his snow pants and dumped them on the floor. Sitting again, he felt his leg through the fabric of his jeans. Practically an ice cube still. Amazing how fast that composite had cooled down. But the heat from the stove was beginning to penetrate, and when he bent the knee joint he could feel it moving more smoothly. Right as rain in just a few minutes.

  The things you didn’t think to ask about when rehab handed you your brand new leg. After a couple of years, he was beginning to understand why so many amputees had a collection of different legs, and spent thousands to get them. His leg was suitable enough for most of what he did, but with time he became increasingly aware that it could be better. He guessed that in the end it wasn’t just enough to be able to walk and maybe run short distances.

  Shaking his head a little at himself, he bent to unlace his boots. The plastic covering for his foot and ankle was purely cosmetic, a concession to looking as normal as possible to patients he met for the first time. He could have done without it. A sock concealed it right now, and he dropped the cuff of his jeans to cover it so Lacy wouldn’t see the gear above it.

  A small vanity, but one he still seemed to need.

  Hey, I’m just a guy like any other guy. Except he didn’t always feel like one. He figured he’d know he had truly accepted his amputation when the day came that he was willing to let the world see that he was indeed different now. When he was willing to flash that leg without worrying about how someone might react to it.

  Or maybe he was afraid of seeing pity. He sure as hell didn’t want any of that.

  The window glass behind him rattled again, noisily. The wind was returning. He scanned the TV screen again and saw they were showing the front beginning to reach them. The entire area was colored in to show expected snow. A frigid afternoon and night ahead of them.

  Rising, he walked around, found he had completely thawed out aside from a persistent sensation of cold from a leg that didn’t exist. Sometimes it amused him, these phantom sensations. The mind was a devious thing.

  Heading for the kitchen, he spied the envelope forgotten on the hall table. Grabbing it, he noted that nothing at all was written on the outside. Disturbed by that, he tore it open and pulled out a single piece of cheap paper. The words block-printed on it chilled him to his soul.

  I found you. The game begins.

  Chapter 4

  They spent the rest of the day placing the tiles on the wall for the backsplash behind the range and the sink. Jess had already measured everything, and after watching for a little while, Lacy figured out how to apply the glue and use the spacers. Every so often she asked Jess to check her work and he approved.

  “I think you have a knack for this,” he said. “Good eye.”

  “I like the tiles you chose, too.” They were large, made of coppery steel with a pattern embossed on them. They looked pleasantly old-fashioned.

  “I thought about doing them on the ceiling, too, but then decided that was overkill.”

  She looked up. “It could be pretty.”

  “Or it could be overwhelming. I still haven’t settled on the right countertops. Every kind has advantages and disadvantages.”

  A thought suddenly struck her. “Shouldn’t the countertops have come before the backsplash?”

  Jess shook his head. “I’ve measured carefully, but whichever way I do it, I’m going to probably be cutting some tin to fit in small spaces.” He shrugged and grinned. “The nice thing about doing it myself is that if I mess up, nobody knows but me. And I’ve got all the time in the world to fix it.”

  She laughed, liking his easy approach to the project. Clearly he’d already done a lot to the house. She thought of long hours alone, when he’d kept his hands busy working around here so he wouldn’t notice what was missing. Sara would always be missing. She smothered a sigh, and closed her eyes briefly.

  He washed his hands at the sink. “Coffee, latte or hot chocolate? And we haven’t eaten since breakfast. Getting hungry?”

  “Starting to,” she admitted. “Coffee sounds great.”

  “If lasagna sounds good, I have some left over in the freezer. When I cook, I make extra so I don’t have to do it every night.”

  “Good idea, and lasagna sounds wonderful.” Rising, she washed her own hands and started a pot of coffee while he pulled the lasagna out of the freezer. In serving-size plastic containers, they just needed to be microwaved. Instead he set them on a pan of warm water.

  “I’m going to heat them slowly in the oven, if you can wait. Otherwise we’d eat in shifts.”

  “Either is fine by me.” She’d enjoyed working in the kitchen and during that whole time she hadn’t spared one thought for her fears. In fact, being here seemed t
o be steadily driving them into the background. She wondered if that was because she wasn’t alone anymore, or if it was the cold weather, or a combination of both. Her friends certainly hadn’t been able to babysit her the way Jess was doing.

  He wouldn’t be able to do it indefinitely, though. Sooner or later he’d have to go back to work, and then she’d be all alone in this relatively isolated house.

  The windows had begun to rattle incessantly, and she had the worst urge to look out, but all of a sudden realized she didn’t want to pull back the curtains.

  So the fear hadn’t entirely left her. It had just given her a vacation.

  Man. She sat at the table again when they had fresh mugs of coffee, and studied its scarred surface. What was wrong with her? Nobody could know where she was. So why couldn’t she go look out to see if it had started snowing yet?

  The warm water loosened the lasagna in the containers, and soon Jess was popping it into the oven in a glass dish. “It’ll take a while,” he said. “Let’s move to the other room. The glue fumes aren’t toxic, but they’re not that pleasant, either.”

  She took his advice, although her nose seemed to have become deadened to the odor, then wondered why he didn’t follow immediately. Ten minutes later she found out as he presented her with a plate of cheese and crackers.

  “I hope you like sharp cheddar,” he said as he put his own plate and mug on the side table.

  “Love it,” she answered. Then he did what she had been unable to do. He opened the curtains to look out.

  “Come see,” he said. “It must have been snowing while we worked. We have full whiteout right now.”

  She put her plate on the end table and went to stand beside him at the window. The stove was no longer putting out as much heat, so she could feel the warmth radiating from Jess. The man was practically a heater all by himself, she thought with mild amusement. And he heated her in more than one way.

  She felt a silly, pointless giggle coming on, but suppressed it because she might have to explain it. Bending, she stepped under his arm to peer around the curtain he held open and all thoughts of giggling vanished in wonder.